The shocking psycho-thriller behind the cult Japanese horror film
Ralph Mccarthy Books
This collection of 14 tales - a half-dozen of which have never before appeared in English - is based on a Japanese collection of, as Dazai described them, "soliloquies by female narrators." Osamu Dazai was a master raconteur who plumbed - in an addictive, easy style - the absurd complexities of life in a society whose expectations cannot be met without sacrificing one's individual ideals on the altar of conformity. The gravitational pull of his prose is on full display in these stories. The collection includes the quietly brilliant long story "Schoolgirl" and shows the fiction of this 20th-century genius in a fresh light.